Why Are There So Few Republican Scientists?

Once again, the question answers itself:

Pharyngula:

Frist becomes the latest Republican to encourage the corruption of education.

Frist, a Republican from Tennessee, spoke to a Rotary Club meeting Friday and told reporters afterward that students need to be exposed to different ideas, including intelligent design."I think today a pluralistic society should have access to a broad range of fact, of science, including faith," Frist said....

What did we do to deserve these fools?

I don't even understand what he's babbling about in that first sentence%u2014he's muddling together fact, science, and faith, and implying that faith is a subset of the first two. What does it mean to have a "wide range" of those things? Do facts have reasonable ranges, such that we can simultaneously argue that humans evolved, and humans were created? That science, the study of the observable, should encompass religion, the invention of the invisible?

Comments

[jizzzow]

Hi, thanks for your weblog, I have a few comments on the Republican scientist post -- before I provide my comments, I'll admit that I know nothing about Frist, nor do I follow educational affairs as closely as others, but I don't believe either of those are necessary for me to make my points.

I do believe that one of the areas that we could work to advance as a community is the scientific understanding of how religious faith (and any strong belief, for that matter) affects human behavior, both on an individual scale as well as societally (at many levels).

Again, I know nothing about Frist and I do not intend to take any position either way on any other issue to which Frist is related. However, I have to state that Frist's comment, taken in the context that you presented, does not necessarily imply what you state it implies. It could imply that, but I don't think your post fairly depicts the issue. Rather, it makes the issue a personal one right off the bat by attacking Frist at a level that has nothing to do with scientific method and what it represents. As a reader, I did not feel as if you were helping me to understand your point of view, but rather you were sending out what I interpreted as manipulative reasoning (I am never given a chance to think it out for myself, as any good scientist would know is required for another scientist to do). Thus, I feel as if a likely outcome from an average reader would be to think that those such as yourself who claim to support the scientific method don't fully understand what they are writing about.

I think the one thing any true scientist would agree to is that in science, we don't care where the information came from. If there is a hint of truth in it, we try to look past any emotional feelings in order to focus on the real matter. That's the beauty of pure scientific method -- it doesn't care "who said what". The scientific method, furthermore, does not assert to have the complete truth revealed about our existence at this time, although there are confident opinions and of course measured results as well to support many hypotheses. But I think most would agree that there's quite a bit more we can learn.

I agree with you that facts do not have "ranges", but I will state that facts can be complex and require much deeper analysis in order to even understand them sometimes. I'll cite traveling at relativistic speeds through spacetime as an example -- the behavior is not quite intuitive to everyone the first time. For some, it's complex enough that they may simply never fully understand. The reasons and mechanisms that describe human existence could be as complex if not greater than spacetime. I think it's important for those within the community of faith to believe that is the position of scientists, rather than one that could be perceived as closed and ridiculing without the appropriate respect due to anyone who has an opinion (including less-than-fully-informed politicians).

If you have issue with Frist, I believe it would better serve your readers to hear that directly.

To conclude -- as a reader, I would prefer to hear comments that are indeed "fair, balanced, and reality-based" as you advertise. One approach could be to take the effort to show pros and cons of each as we understand them and their impact on society today -- that would help us learn more so we could continue the discussion. I believe this would be a much more productive approach than to lump your emotional opinion as "scientific basis" and make the struggle for the rest of us even more difficult.

I enjoy your blog for the most part and find your comment generally intelligent and of value. I thank you for the effort and I'd like to reiterate that this comment is meant to help clarify and express my opinions only.

Thank you for your time.

[Roger Albin]

"What did we do to deserve these fools?"

We have an educational system that does a poor job of teaching math and science. The former is particularly important because math is often the first really serious introduction to rigorous logic and analysis. Interview a lot of scientists and many of them will tell you that high school geometry was an important experience because it was their first introduction to the ideas of proof, verification, and falsification.

[Theophrastus Bombastus von Hoehenheim den Sidste]

I would like to be the first to suggest, that the Right Honourable Mister Jizznow is - indeed - a wanker.

His specious appeal to fairness crashes to the ground on two counts.

First and foremost, special creation is demonstrably false; honest scientists abandoned that theory a century and a half ago. Anyone uneducated on this subject may contact the biology department of his local community college. The scholars there will be thrilled to speak with anyone who cares about the matter.

Second and politically, so-called intelligent design is a transparently manipulative scheme to gussy-up special creation in a way that might pass legal muster. It adds nothing to anything, despite ten years of whining by its proponents.

Science has presented us with some wonderful gifts, but it does not live in a vacuum. When the Know-Nothings have drowned it in the bathtub, it will not resurrect itself.

In closing, that distant roar you hear is the sound of Chinese and Indian analysts cheering. After twenty years of worrying about "How can we surpass these guys, they put a Man on the Moon and have the best universities ever?", they can see us throwing down our intellectual weapons and declaring forfeit.

[Tad Brennan]

Amid the babble and the muddle of Frist's sentence, one thing is clear:

he is advocating the teaching of faith in public schools.

Whether he thinks faith is some kind of science, or some kind of fact, or whatever--in fact, no matter how you parse this sentence--it still comes out this way: he wants the public schools to teach faith.

In a way, I think he has blown the cover off this latest round of the Creationist con-game. After all, they keep claiming that ID is *science*. Not faith, no, *science*. Just like evolution. Honest.

Well, no scientist believes it. And now it's clear that Frist doesn't believe it, either. He thinks that in order to get ID into the class-room, you have to argue that faith should be in there.

And that's because he has got one thing right: ID is faith, not science.

[GBV]

Jizzow's great parody of scientific principles and methods is better than The Onion. Kudos, sir or ma'am.

[tante aime]

Scientists recently unveiled the discovery of the 'nano-bug', a marine molecular-sized nano-bacter
whose combined mass outweighs that of all the fish
in all the world's oceans. Trillions and gazillions.

And speaking in Nature several years ago, scientists
also revealed the existence of micro "sand-mites",
living between beach sand grains, whose combined
mass outweighs that of all the land animals. More
trillions and bazillions of near-spiritual life forms.

Now comes Man. (Uhh, deeper voice). Now comes M-A-N!

Man has a plan. Everything in Creation must fit into
Man's convoluted scientific shoeboxes. What? Another
new organism? Well, evolution has been going on for a
billion years, right? Man has recorded no evolution,
ever, during 2000 years of recorded history. Cross-
breeding, fantastic varietals, an amazing genetics.
Nevertheless, all life arose from one original ovum!
All right, dude! Shaw! The chicken ... or that egg?

So over 2,000 years, no evidence of evolution, but in
1,000,000,000, miraculously, a gazillion nano-bacters
became a gazillion micro-sand-mites, became a million
complex macro-organism species, by the fossil record,
if we believe it, that were *already* thundering the
earth several hundred million years ago, in far more complexity than they are now today, when species are
disappearing forever at a pace faster than Chicxulub.

With that Wikipedia, Darwin begins to sound more and more like a million monkeys and a million typewriters,
cranking a million sheets of pulp, to find at last:
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your poor philosophy."

Yeah, and meteors in Antarctica came from Mars! True!
And proto-hominid man came from Uranus! True, dude!
?How is 'all life from one egg' and 'whole universe
from one big bang' any different from Creationism?!

Sounds like a whole lot of sci-fi ivory tower to me!
Scientists rank just above public bureaucrats on the evolutionary scale. They both suck taxes up the ass,
and talk shit out their mouths.

Speaking of which:
http://67.15.157.3/~waxaudio/Mediacracy_07_Imagine_This_192kbps.MP3

[non economist]

Note to am- a science or engineering major as an undergraduate does not a professional scientist make. Nice try, though, at the suddenly-becoming-standard conservative reply when confronted with an argument they don't like- "yeah, but bush won the election."

[A. Zarkov]

Here is my prescription for dealing with this matter in the educational arena. We include in the science curriculum a topic called “junk science” or “crank science.” Now what subjects do we include here? My list.

Creationism
Intelligent Design
Cold fusion
Remote viewing
Telepathy
Precognition
Telekinesis
UFOs
Astrology
Chiropractory ...
Breast implants
Nuclear winter
The Laffer curve

and so on. But there are more areas on the fringe of junk science in the sense that they lack sufficient evidence to really compelling today. They could be compelling tomorrow with more evidence. Or they could end up in the dustbin of junk science

Secondary tobacco smoke
Global warming
Population explosion
Deforestation
Acid rain
The Atkins diet
Low level ionizing radiation

and so on. Clearly the public needs science education that encourages critical thinking in all areas including the politically correct ones. Perhaps then we won’t get the kind of ignorant jury verdicts like the one we got in the recent Vioxx case. I know many think that Global warming is a fact beyond dispute, and I agree it’s more likely a problem than not. But that’s not reason to muzzle the critics. This I have seen with my own eyes when the budget is at stake.

[Ottnott]

Dishonest critics deserve the muzzle.

You can take it off when you post here, though.

[fred]

> Why Are There So Few Republican Scientists?

So, how many republican scientists are there?

Are there any reliable statistics available or is Brad
just using a popular meme?

[unagi]

I'm confused by tante aime's comment. She is presenting parody of anti-science, know-nothing crowd, isn't she?

[bad Jim]

So, would any of you Republicans care to defend the pontifications of your Senate Majority Leader?

As for Frist, why would anyone expect anything reasonable from someone with a medical degree who was unwilling to disavow the notion that tears or sweat could transmit HIV?

[ChasHeath]

Only a lawyer could concieve of the notion that inventing a pseudo-science framework to support a religious belief is a path to a pluralistic society with access to a broad range of fact, science, and faith.

[Cal]

ChasHeath: But Frist is a doctor.

[MobiusKlein]

A. Zarkov,
I never got the memo that Nuclear Winter was in Crank Science category. Isn't there some category for scientific theories that were merely found to be false? Putting it along side Astrology seems cruel, even if it wasn't true.

And Acid rain was a real thing too: I just don't recall if the bite was worse than the bark.

rbb

[bad Jim]

As a careful observer of large fauna, I'm reasonably confident that breast implants do exist.

Even I, a smoker, am occasionally victimized by second-hand smoke.

Nuclear winter could probably be verified or repudiated experimentally. Perhaps if the atmosphere gets warm enough we ought to give it a try.

[MTC]

Why not have two tracks in every school--"Democrat Science" and "Republican Science"--with every child enrolled according to his or her parents' voter registration? Independents and permanent residents would get to choose tracks; the children of non-voters would be expelled. Then everyone will be happy, no?

And it doesn't have to stop with science. There can be "Democrat history" and "Republican history" ("Ms. Malkin, Ms. Malkin! Your textbook deal has come through!") "Democrat English" (words and their meanings must match) and "Republican English" (A lie is not an untruth, if you know what I mean). How about "Democrat shop" (slow, slow, slow) and "Republican shop" (Safety goggles? We have to cut costs!) And gosh, how about the econ classes?

I will be a beautiful, beautiful world--separate, but equal.

[A. Zarkov]

“I never got the memo that Nuclear Winter was in Crank Science category.”

You’re right, strictly speaking it isn’t. I put it in that category because of the Sagan promoted it, and because he wouldn’t release the source code of the TTAPS model. I wondered how he calculated how much debris would get up lifted, and later I found out it was pretty much an arbitrary assumption. If anyone knows differently, share it with us. Then we have Sagan’s law suit against Apple computer because they had code named a project “Sagan.” When Apple changed the name to “BHA” he sued again claiming that BHA obviously stood for “butt head astronomer.” Needless to say Sagan got a stinging rebuke in court. Thus the crank behind the crank science.

[scottfromca]

The liberals have taken over science too? Holy shit, why science? Trying to determine why there are gay people and how solve the probelm of small penies in vetro?

[Peter]

I find some of the debate to worthy of The Onion. Like how Bill Gates claims there is a shortage of computer scientists while donating huge sums to the discovery instute, whose mission is to destroy science in America. It seems that irony is becoming a "basic food group" in America these days.

[Karmakin]

I have a bit of a different take on this. What the ID forces are looking for, and it's pretty much in lockstep with the whole Republican party, to be honest, is the death of objectivity. You can see that in the media with the "he-said, she-said" reporting.

Why do the Republicans want to kill objectivity so much? Because you can objectivly obtain your values and morals. And when you do such a thing, gereally speaking, you're going to fall pretty hard on the Democratic side of things. Plain and simple.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/23/opinion/23tue3.html?ex=1282449600&en=55ae46551ab20405&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

August 23, 2005

Grasping the Depth of Time as a First Step in Understanding Evolution
By VERLYN KLINKENBORG

Last month a team of paleontologists announced that it had found several fossilized dinosaur embryos that were 190 million years old - some 90 million years older than any dinosaur embryos found so far. Those kinds of numbers are always a little daunting. Ever since I was a boy in a public elementary school in Iowa, I've been learning to face the eons and eons that are embedded in the universe around us.

I know the numbers as they stand at present, and I know what they mean, in a roughly comparative way. The universe is perhaps 14 billion years old. Earth is some 4.5 billion years old. The oldest hominid fossils are between 6 million and 7 million years old. The oldest distinctly modern human fossils are about 160,000 years old.

The truth of these numbers has the same effect on me as watching the night sky in the high desert. It fills me with a sense of nonspecific immensity. I don't think I'm alone in this.

One of the most powerful limits to the human imagination is our inability to grasp, in a truly intuitive way, the depths of terrestrial and cosmological time. That inability is hardly surprising because our own lives are so very short in comparison. It's hard enough to come to terms with the brief scale of human history. But the difficulty of comprehending what time is on an evolutionary scale, I think, is a major impediment to understanding evolution.

It's been approximately 3.5 billion years since primeval life first originated on this planet. That is not an unimaginable number in itself, if you're thinking of simple, discrete units like dollars or grains of sand. But 3.5 billion years of biological history is different. All those years have really passed, moment by moment, one by one. They encompass an actual, already lived reality, encompassing all the lives of all the organisms that have come and gone in that time. That expanse of time defines the realm of biological possibility in which life in its extraordinary diversity has evolved. It is time that has allowed the making of us.

The idea of such quantities of time is extremely new....

[Barry]

Thanks, Ann. I got that article.

[Fred Hapgood]

There is certainly nothing irrational about the speculation that the universe is a computer game, constructed by some other species for its own amusement or whatever, and in that sense intelligently designed.
What kind of evidence might attest to the point? Possibly a 'hack' -- a phenomenon that cannot be integrated into the principles of the rest of the Universe. Something quick and dirty that was dropped into Creation just to get the job done on time. Like consciousness.

[Dano]

Right on, Peter. Remember: it is easier to sell undereducated people things they don't need than to educate folks who realize they don't need to buy so much stuff (esp. on a MS OS).

D

[ken melvin]

I think ID (no child left behind, too, seems a dumbing down tactic) is a tactical mistake for the right. Science, scientists,and a well educated work force provide the basis for their incomes. Here, in CA, they're still smirking about Prop 13, but the state's been in decline ever since. I got mine; to hell with you Jake? Doesn't extend well.

[cm]

What they want is people who are smart, know what keeps the world together, and able to push the envelope, while at the same time docile and controllable.

Others have tried that before, with limited success. In the end it always comes down to suppression of opportunity and persecution of intellect.

[anciano]

American culture has always disliked eggheads and wanted quick results- don’t bother me with the details, just give me the cure, the spaceship, the “electricity that’s too cheap to meter”. Don’t worry about long term theoretical issues like pollution, climate change, disposal of radioactive waste, petroleum depletion, etc. Consider this quote from Harry Hollingsworth in 1927, “The average American is superstitious, ill-educated, conventional, mentally equal to a 14 year old and can be convinced to buy anything if his neighbor admires it” from The Literary Digest. Many US scientific accomplishments in and immediately after World War II came from Europeans fleeing the Nazis- we never bothered to teach math and science well in most public schools and we’re doing much worse in that regard nowadays. American individuality has been mostly of the freedom from variety. There’s nothing wrong with asking why questions, why is there a universe, why isn’t the earth at the center of the universe, what is the purpose of human life, but they require tolerance and preparation and should not come out of science class time.

Why is professor Behe so sure that complicated parts of the animal body are so complex that evolution couldn’t possibly have created them, yet he ignores the complexity of plant life? Plants don’t frighten him, sex, birth control and morning after pills do. Bush and the neocons may carry this to extremes but it’s an American trait. Frist is just an opportunist, doesn't even make a convincing neocon...

[bncthor]

Zarkov..."Perhaps then we won’t get the kind of ignorant jury verdicts like the one we got in the recent Vioxx case."

Is all this discussion of science vs non-science just a question or contest about who should decide? I wonder sometimes which has produced the largest payback for the well being of humans - investments in science or investments in religion.

And, I find Zarkov's posts are always interesting and informative.

[Jay]

Let me say, first of all, that I think that ID is hokum, is is not a necessary part of the Christian faith.

Having said that, would it be so terrible to allow some discussion of religion in school? This is done in England, and they aren't science-impaired.

[wcw]

I find Zarkov's posts to be the blog-comment
version of a Scalia dissent -- a bit oversnarky,
facially reasonable, and deeply misleading.

Lumping deforestation and global warming, for
each of which there is a surfeit of evidence,
in with a fad diet that bases on self-induced
ketosis is a perfect example.

I am afraid that I find those whom Scalia
impresses themselves flawed. Likewise with Z.

[hbj]

MTC-

Awesome comment.

[PaulC]

> Having said that, would it be so terrible to allow some discussion of religion in school?

I think it would be terrible and bizarre to spend much time on such dicussion in a science class. I'm fine with a little discussion like the student expresses some skepticism and you reply amiably that you don't have to believe this stuff, but you do need to know the state of current scientific understanding to get a good grade. Then the discussion ends and you continue with your explanation of the Krebs cycle, mitosis, or punctuated equilibrium.

Now I have no problem with an elective Comparative Lit course covering various creation myths including but not preferential to the Bible. I took a mythology course in college at a state university that started with creation myths. It was taught by a religious studies professor who emphasized the definition of myth as sacred history, vital to the definition of a culture. Today, this has left me with a deeper understanding than what I started with (e.g. myth as a set of kid's tales to stop them asking why it rains when you don't know yourself). It demands a certain maturity level to teach this in an American high school, and you'd have yahoos on the school board crying about relativism, so it might be easier just to skip it entirely.

[tjallen]

I don't think it would be so bad to teach "Christianity" in the public schools, if it were taught in a religion or worldviews class in context with Homeric Gods, Roman Gods, Zoroaster, Islam, Hinduism, anamist religions, etc etc etc etc plus atheism too, as possible worldviews. But it would have to make clear that Christianity is just another religion, made up by humans, the Bible is just another book, written by humans, and that the metaphysics (common to many of these religions) involving souls, afterlives, gods and angels, devils and ghosts, creation stories and ending prophesies, all have little or no empirical foundation.

And I bet it would never be taught like that in US public schools! Even college courses taught this way are under attack.

[ken melvin]

Fundamentalists Christians don't study religion. Most of their ministers aren't educated in theology. Like all fundamentalists everywhere, they are into belief. Not reason. Not knowledge. Belief.

[tjallen]

If Christianity were taught as just another religion, among others, and were shorn of its sacred metaphysics, perhaps it would be easier to take Jesus seriously as an ethically gifted thinker.

His words, what little of them we can recover from the embellishments (perhaps some parables and the Sermon on the Mount?), and shorn of the end-times, if you don't do this you'll go to hell fearmongering, and you have an ethical philosophy of the golden rule, love your neighbor as yourself, duties to the poor and sick, distaste for hypocracy, what else? This philosophy-of-Jesus might even be useful to the Democrats, against the hard fundamentalism of the believe-every-sacred-word crowd.

[PaulC]

>Why is professor Behe so sure that complicated parts of the animal body are so complex that evolution couldn’t possibly have created them, yet he ignores the complexity of plant life?

One reason I find IDers very suspect is that they seem to pounce willy nilly on allegedly intractable questions (evolution of the eye) while claiming no challenge to other equally counterintuitive scientific principles.

Now me, I find evolution including evolution of complex organs to be fairly intuitive once you're willing to believe that a complex multicellular organism can be described by a strand of DNA in one cell nucleus. Once you have a robust encoding such that an incremental change in genotype produces an incremental change in phenotype, then it seems inevitable that successive generations would adapt to the environment, and inevitable that random sampling (i.e. fossils) would show you more instances around basins of attraction than the trajectories take to get there (hence, the relative difficulty of finding transitional fossils).

But I still find it mind boggling that DNA works at all. The main thing we know it does is encode proteins. Somehow you take a little bit of this protein and a little bit of that, and instead of getting protein soup, you get a cheetah running a mile a minute. Of course, I believe that process does work, I believe that scientists studying it (unlike me) actually have some inkling of how, and I am pretty confident that we will understand it better and better. At least we can replicate it in the lab.

IDers and other creationists are not foolish enough to question the material basis of biology (any vitalists left out there?). I think this is not because they find it any easier than I do to understand a process such as how a single cell differentiates into a complex organism. Rather, they just know that there is nowhere to hide on the open plains of that battle. So instead they pick a fight on paleontology where the vagaries of the fossil record gives them places to hide.

[PaulC]

Here's a thought: Using high school biology class as a forum for "teaching the controversy" over ID makes about as much sense as using high school French class to teach the controversy over pronouncing "T" at the end of words.

I.e., the purpose of introductory science is to learn the language of science as practiced by the vast majority of scientists. You don't have to like the way the French pronounce their words, but you do need to learn it for the exam. Likewise, you don't have to believe evolution happens, but you do need to learn what the vast majority of biologists are writing papers about.

[tjallen]

Excellent comments above, PaulC, especially about the protein soup cheetahs (Grins!)

You mention "we can replicate it in the lab." Perhaps soon Dr Ventner (sp?) or another scientist will successfully "create" a new species. Note that it will be created, not evolved. So deep knowledge of genetics and evolutionary biology will enable a scientist to achieve the creationist's own Genesis story. I wonder if the creationists think this achievement of evolutionary biology will actually support the creationist accounts?!

[Anand]

There seem to be plenty of Republican Economists though...

[Lawrence]

"Do facts have reasonable ranges, such that we can simultaneously argue that humans evolved, and humans were created?"

"Facts" in science really do have ranges. The ranges about them are often referred to as error bands in most scientific fields. For example, much of the history of astronomy and cosmology has been devoted to narrowing the range of so-called "constants" which are indeed "facts" in that the physical principles underlying them are proven. However, the true numerical values of these "constants"/"facts" are not known with certainty.

Whether there exisits a set of "facts" - however they are accurately known - that simultaneously allows both human evolution AND human creation in some manner is a matter personal choice. Some would call this choice religion.

All that we can say for sure is that there currently are no set of "facts" that can definitely preclude simultaneous human evolution and human creation in some manner. Some would call this absence of "facts" reality.

I take refuge in the statistician's creed: "In God we trust, all others must bring data."

[Steve LaBonne]

Biologists who are devout Christians (and there are more of them than the ID fools would like you to believe) simply, and very sensibly, maintain that Darwinian evolution _is_ the mechanism that God has chosen to use in creating life. There is no need for conflict between Christianity (or other revealed religions) and science, the conflict is only with the most extreme, naive and intellectually disreputable versions of biblical literalism, such as were already reejcted by the early Church Fathers a milleniuam and a half ago. The philosopher Michael Ruse has written a very thoughtful book about the lack of any necessary contradiction between Christianity and evolutionary biology, unforunately the title escapes me for the moment.

[Telurine]

Hmmm....Frist is a politician...first he says that Schiavo looks fine to him. Then says he supports stem cells (thinking a less offensive technology is bound to come along while the US dithers about it)...then he balances that by bending to the newly agitated right wing crowd and saying that ID should be taught. Will he next say to all the attentive mics and clicking cameras...'maybe there is research to support global warming'? Really why are we still paying attention? I think there should be a new college major, called history, that teaches people how to remember events from the week before so that they don't get bogged down rehashing such news. If people had their wits about them they'd stifle a yawn...ID?...Frist?..and walk away. Maybe the Rep. party doesn't want scientists they just want some attentive chattering fools...and they're well on they're way to success.

[Russell L. Carter]

"Remember, science ain't for everybody." Exactly right. They could really save some money by getting rid of Math and English, too.

[Dave Munger]

"Who really gives a rip if the average American believes in or understands evolution?"

I wouldn't--if those who didn't believe in or understand evolution weren't allowed to vote on issues pertaining to science.

[JRossi]

Russell Carter, you're right: We shouldn't use controversial books in High School English. A waste of time and effort. But mathematical truth is not controversial and is therefore safe. Dave Munger, I agree that those who know nothing of evolution should not serve on research committees in biology in our major universities.

[bncthor]

Intelligent Design vs Evolution. I don't understand what the fuss is all about. Geez, how important can reality be?

[liberal]

PaulC wrote, "Now me, I find evolution including evolution of complex organs to be fairly intuitive once you're willing to believe that a complex multicellular organism can be described by a strand of DNA in one cell nucleus. Once you have a robust encoding such that an incremental change in genotype produces an incremental change in phenotype, then it seems inevitable that successive generations would adapt to the environment, and inevitable that random sampling (i.e. fossils) would show you more instances around basins of attraction than the trajectories take to get there (hence, the relative difficulty of finding transitional fossils)."

But what's not at all obvious is what time scales this can occur on.

"But I still find it mind boggling that DNA works at all. The main thing we know it does is encode proteins. Somehow you take a little bit of this protein and a little bit of that, and instead of getting protein soup, you get a cheetah running a mile a minute."

I think this is an extremely important and usually overlooked point. It's funny to see people getting all huffy over natural selection as a solution to the problem of complex design when we really don't understand how the designs themselves work as integrated wholes (i.e., at the systems level).

[s9]

"...In closing, that distant roar you hear is the sound of Chinese and Indian analysts cheering..."

I doubt that. If they're really that smart— and I believe they are— they're watching us do this and worrying over how they might keep from following us over the same cliff when their own macrocultures hollow out, like ours is doing now.

[s9]

"There is certainly nothing irrational about the speculation that the universe is a computer game, constructed by some other species for its own amusement or whatever, and in that sense intelligently designed."

Nope. That's irrational too. Computation is not evidence of intelligent design, c.f. http://www.wolframscience.com/. If you admit that the Universe functions entirely according to mathematical physics, then you have to reject the possibility of an intelligent designer.

The existence of intelligent design can only be established by the workings of magick. Mathematics will never get you there. Deciding that consciousness is a magickal phenomenon might do it for you, but it's not science you're doing when you draw that distinction.

[Big Al]

But Anne, your favourites, are living dinosaurs!
Perhaps the poor man was confusing intelligent design with CAD.

[a different chris]

PaulC, my take on the fossils is even more relaxed than yours. I'm way more amazed by the fossils we *have* found than the fact that we don't have every necessary transitional species!!

Like liberal says: "But what's not at all obvious is what time scales this can occur on."

Because as soon as you begin to try to wrap you mind around said time scales, it's a hell of a lot easier to imagine a fish species working its way onto land than to consider the chances of Ms. Leakey (sp?) stumbling across the remains of long -incredibly, insanely long- dead Lucy!!

[BillCross]

Also, speices evolution has been observed several times during modern scientific enquiry http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html

[tjallen]

a different chris,
The chances of finding Lucy are better if you consider not just a band of 30 or so individuals of which we imagine Lucy was a member, but more like 10,000 to 20,000 living at any one time, and five new generations every hundred years, over a quarter-million years, is a LOT of Lucy-like creatures.

Hey! Something like this, appropriately tightened up, might make a good Brad DeLong Math Problem! if there are 10,000 individuals in a species at time a, and they reproduce at a steady rate, five generations every hundred years, how many individuals are there over a quarter million years? Whatever this number is, will give a better perspective on (Johansen?)'s "luck" in finding Lucy.

[Michael Cain]

"Somehow you take a little bit of this protein and a little bit of that, and instead of getting protein soup, you get a cheetah running a mile a minute."

I love the phrasing. Hey -- a hundred years ago we had no idea about DNA. Today we know its role and structure, but are only beginning to explore the amazingly complex protein chemistry that is us. Another hundred years and we'll know a lot more about how that works, and how it might have arisen. One of the nice things about science is "I don't know... yet" is a perfectly good answer.

[ad]

Evolution and Science is too difficult for some of these
people to understand(GWB,etc)...ID, creationism is simple, easy to understand, "God Made Us". A good chunk of Americans take the Bible to be literal truth...They still believe the earth is only a few thousand year old, and God made us in 6 days...They can't bear the fact that Bible can be proven wrong...It brings into doubt thier entire belief system.....

[Doug]

I think he meant fact, science and faith as separate. He must have seen the Simpson's 100th episode which states "God has no place within these walls, just as facts have no place within organized religion".

[dorhuya]

dorhuya http://www.apples.com ; Thanks!